'Killers of the Flower Moon' review: Martin Scorsese's compassion reveals our complicity

Though superhero obsessives argue otherwise, there is much more to Martin Scorsese's filmography than his gangster movies. He's made mesmerizing and moving music documentaries, like No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, Shine a Light, and Personality Crisis: One Night Only. He's offered sweeping epics like the sprawling 19th-century romance The Age of Innocence, and the rapturous biopics Kundun and The Aviator. He's made daring comedies with The King of Comedy and After Hours. And yes, his "gangster movies" — Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, The Irishman, and arguably The Wolf of Wall Street — are damn fine cinema. (Period.) But with Killers of the Flower Moon, one of the greatest American filmmakers to ever live has bested even himself by twisting his previous modus operandi in crime dramas to demand more of his audience. 

Scorsese has long been a master of creating compelling criminals on screen, inviting audiences into the vicarious thrill of being a made man or a Wall Street titan or even a devil-may-care ex-con hellbent on revenge (Cape Fear). With Killers of the Flower Moon, he once more embeds us with criminals at the story's core. But this time, we are not to revel in their cavalier violence or be wooed by their merciless pursuit of wealth and power. Instead, we are made complicit in their ruthless conspiracy of genocide.  

What's Killers of the Flower Moon about?

Based on the David Grann non-fiction book of the same name, Killers of the Flower Moon delves into a series of murders during the 1920s of Osage tribe members. It's a true story not particularly well known outside of Oklahoma, where the murders took place, or by non-Native Americans.

A Native American tribe that had survived being kicked across the nation by "the great white father" — white colonialists turned governmental forces — the Osage people were eventually cast to a reservation in Oklahoma. They accepted this land in part because it seemed such a desolate space they were sure to be left alone at last. Then they struck oil. 

As these Native American families were made wealthy by the find, white men gathered to find ways to wheedle money out of the newly minted millionaires. Killers displays how they managed to do this via conservatorships, predatory business practices, and literal grave-robbing. Among the most heinous of these methods was a conspiracy that led to dozens of homicides. 

Scorsese and co-screenwriter Eric Roth make a dramatic change from Grann's book, not in content but in approach. Rather than laying out the crimes and the ensuing FBI investigation, Killers embeds us with the criminals from the start — like many a Scorsese movie before it. However, the criminals here are not chaotically compelling anti-heroes like Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle The Wolf of Wall Street's Jordan Belfort, or Goodfellas' Henry Hill. It's made clear early on that these are cowards and con men who deal in conspiracy, corruption, and white supremacy.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro bring two historical criminals to vivid life.

While the film begins with the Osage tribe, who in a solemn funeral ritual recognize their way of life is being lost amid the pressure to assimilate, Killers of the Flower Moon most closely follows a wolf in sheep's clothing. Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a slow-witted but greedy veteran who rolls into Osage territory looking for a leg up from his affluent cattle rancher uncle, William "King" Hale (Robert De Niro). 

By bringing together two of his most lauded recurring players/muses, Scorsese might have shaped Ernest and King as a pair of swaggering rogues as he had in his past collaborations. Instead, he pushes each actor out of their niches. DiCaprio sheds his posh posturing, slumping his shoulders and slapping on a set of crooked teeth, a jutting jaw, an accompanying scowl, and a haircut that looks like a punishment. Meanwhile, De Niro's signature snarl and intense gaze have been shelved in favor of a jolly grin, open arms, and a bouncy Southern drawl. These transformations are thorough and treacherous. 

On their surface, Ernest seems a genial fool, and King appears to be a sophisticated and caring benefactor, just as he's seen by the Osage community with whom he does business and socializes. But no sooner has Ernest set himself down in one of King's polished chairs that the conspiring begins — a casual conversation about hopes of wealth and women becoming something slick with suspicion and devilish schemes. By binding us to Ernest, Scorsese gets audiences up close and uncomfortably personal with King's poisonous influence, which turned a gold-digging buffoon into a duplicitous killer. 

Where many of Scorsese's past crooks and criminal protagonists have been charming or cool or at least having an enviable blast in their decadence, Ernest is none of the above. He's presented as a grimy thief, a petty brat, and a moron with no gift for the long view. Even the romance that might humanize him — with Mollie, a lovely but embattled Osage woman played by Lily Gladstone — serves to villainize him, as each moment of wooing is undercut by his naked pursuit of her family's money. 

It's not that Ernest is devoid of charm. Despite his goonishness, he beguiles Mollie with his feral moxie and earnest — though inconsistent — tenderness. Yet this too serves to sicken us, because as she trusts him, we — bound to his shoulder — know what he's up to and what horrors he is capable of. In Killers of the Flower Moon, we are not the enraptured audience to an American folk hero, winning us over with his gift of gab and flashy lifestyle. We are silent witnesses to the hushed racism, vicious murder plots, and blooming cover-ups of a classless moron and his double-talking uncle. Scorsese isn't just ushering us into the backrooms of the criminal world, he is exposing how the insidiousness of white supremacy in America makes all those who do nothing to actively fight it complicit in its evils. 

Killers of the Flower Moon respects the Osage people without pretending at their perspective. 

While the FBI arrives in the form of former Texas Ranger Tom White (Jesse Plemons, with a thrumming certainty), this adaptation doesn't play as a white savior tale. For one thing, these white hats come in far too late for their eventual efforts to be cheered. Even the Osage characters within the film rightly sneer at the body count that had to be met before government intervention. For another, the Osage culture has a bigger role than the FBI in Killers' story. 

Throughout the film, elements of Osage life and culture are woven in, creating a balance to Ernest's deadly opportunistic perspective. Some scenes include conversations in the Osage's mother tongue. While some are subtitled — like conversions between Mollie and her mother — others are not, leaving those who don't speak the language out of translation, urged to recognize they are an outsider. Rituals of marriage, child-naming, and remembrance are showcased with a respectful eye, giving time and space to these moments of joy and loss, complete with ceremonial garb, song, and speeches. Though Ernest is studying their culture as part of his aim to seduce Mollie, these speeches and ceremonies are not explained as they normally might be to outsiders. Scorsese is content to give them space to exist without the pressure to appease a non-Native American audience's curiosity. 

In sharp contrast to these ceremony sequences are abrupt scenes of death. Osage men and women are slaughtered by white men with ruthless efficiency, their bodies discarded like trash. Every killing scene is shocking, especially as they frequently jump in after a sequence of quiet conversation. Scorsese is not making a spectacle of the violence, but instead illustrating how these deaths came out of nowhere and ice cold. Your breath may catch in shock because a scene of a young mother cradling her child outside her pretty home shouldn't end the way this one will. 

Lily Gladstone holds her own in Killers of the Flower Moon. 

Personalizing the story of these murders is Mollie Burkhart, who is also a central figure in the book, as her family figured on both sides of the killers and the killed. Opposite DiCaprio and De Niro, Gladstone is a rock, standing firm and not to be outshone by these A-listers. Her performance is one of keening and personal agony, but also of joy and steely resilience. While Ernest may be a fool, Mollie isn't. Her slight smirk and playful side-eye show that she understands a lot about his motives from the jump. But how could anyone predict how deep a betrayal this suitor with the foolhardy grin could muster? 

Hanging thick over Killers of the Flower Moon is fear for Mollie. Bound to Ernest in even his secret sins, the audience knows better than she what could become of her. Tension burns from this place, torching our nerves as we watch helplessly and terrified for her. But Gladstone doesn't play Mollie as some wilting flower or tragic victim. She has a wry tsk for Ernest's most naked flirtation. She has a snarled huff when her mother plays favorites. She has a delicate touch with her children and a yearning one for her lover. While Mollie is not the center of this film, neither is she cast to its edges. Mollie Burkhart stalwartly joins the ranks of Scorsese women — like Karen Hill, Countess Ellen Olenska, and Ginger McKenna — who will not be conquered by volatile men and are enthralling in their own fullness. 

Martin Scorsese delivers a riveting and unflinching film about American evils. 

At 80, Scorsese is still challenging himself and his audiences to understand America through its criminals. Who do we hold as folk heroes over villains? Which victims will be remembered over scorned or outright overlooked? Whose stories need telling? 

For Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese consulted with Osage people to better comprehend their perspective. Within the film, there are several sequences where tribe leaders are given the opportunity to directly communicate their feelings, their memories, and their desires. Mollie's story invites outsiders more deeply into this experience. But Scorsese does not go so far as to center his story in the Osage perspective, because while this film esteems the tribe, it is not solely for them. The Osage people know this horror story. Killers of the Flower Moon is speaking chiefly to those who do not, and more specifically those who might today apply its lessons of the dangers of complacency and complicity to white supremacy. 

In a jarring but brilliant epilogue, Scorsese brings himself into the narrative, delivering a brief but deeply moving speech. It's maybe 30 seconds of the movie, but it speaks volumes of his intentions. 

It is not enough for us to look back on the past. We must interrogate it rigorously. Scorsese has done so with Killers of the Flower Moon, looking not only at what happened but also how it was handled by the powers of government and media. Through his lens of the coward Ernest Burkhart, Scorsese demystifies the crime and its crafters, revealing them to be craven and callous killers, never as clever as they esteemed themselves to be. But more than this condemnation, through binding his audience to their pursuit and injecting himself in a key cameo, Scorsese challenges viewers to recognize what part they play with their own silence day to day. 

In the end, Killers of a Flower Moon is an astonishing accomplishment and easily one of the best films of the year. Yet it is not the definitive take on the Osage murders, and Scorsese knows it. His brilliant film refuses to close the book and instead dares us to read deeper. 

How to watch: Killers of the Flower Moon is now streaming on Apple TV+.

UPDATE: Jan. 11, 2024, 5:19 p.m. EST This article was originally published for the theatrical release of "Killers of the Flower Moon." It has been republished for the film's streaming debut.